MPLS TP AS PACKET PLATFORM FOR CRITICAL SERVICES IN POWER TRANSMISSION

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JOZTHDWING@HOTMAIL.COM 
 
 
MPLS-TP AS PACKET PLATFORM FOR CRITICAL SERVICES IN POWER 
TRANSMISSION 
 
 
J. RAMIREZ* H. CABRERA O. BAUTISTA 
GE CORPOELEC PLC 
Venezuela Venezuela Venezuela 
SUMMARY 
 
Beyond the trend of using IP as the “up to date technology” for SCADA (IEC 
60870-5-104) and protections scheme integrated to a centralized management 
of the load (Sinchrophasors PMU), there is the need to approach the automatic 
switching and intrinsic autonomy of routing algorithms to provide smart 
capability to the communications network [1]. For long time IP equipment 
manufacturers have been trying to penetrate the electrical utilities with partial 
success, they were able to support only added value services as IP Video, VoIP 
and corporate IP traffic which is are not “critical” or essential to the electrical 
power system operation. 
 
On this paper is presented a theoretical-practical evaluation of the MPLS-TP 
protocol which offers an IP platform according to the complimentary services 
requirements (high bandwidth) as well for reliable channels features through 
the emulation of TDM systems with delay, symmetry and self-healing switching 
in order to warrant the correct operation of critical services as Teleprotection, 
Differential Relays and Sinchrophasors. 
 
Key time measurements will be presented which certifies the theoretical 
reliability of MPLS-TP as main IP communication platform in electrical 
transmission systems. 
 
 
KEYWORDS 
 
MPLS-TP, DIFERENTIAL PROTECTION, TELEPROTECTION, SMART 
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM, CRITICAL SERVICES, PSEUDO-WIRE, TDM 
EMULATION, SYMETRICAL PATH 
 
 
 
21, rue d’Artois, F-75008 PARIS D2-309 CIGRE 2016 
http : //www.cigre.org 
 
 
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1 TECNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS 
It is described with some detail the case in Venezuela that is not very different of 
actual systems in Latin America, Middle East and part of Asia. In the beginning, 
telecommunications at electrical utilities was characterized by an extended use of 
analog Power Line Carrier (figure 1) and it use exclusive for operations proper of the 
electrical network: teleprotection, SCADA and voice to/from dispatch center (control 
centers). The limitations of bandwidth that was shared among different links (40 to 
500 kHz) [2], determined the transmission of information between substations and 
generator plants to the control centers, to be done at bit rates as low as 600 baud 
and in some cases at 300 baud in analog channels, sharing the bandwidth among 
voice and Data, these channels were named Speech-Plus (see Fig. 2). 
 
 
Fig. 1. SSB modulation scheme in Analog Power Line Carrier 
 
 
 
 
Fig. 2. Speech-Plus Channel in SSB systems 
 
 
In some cases, it was deployed microwave systems with PDH technology, from 2 
mbps to 34 mbps, its use depended upon limitations of frequencies and also 
restrictions imposed by preference policy of the National Public Telephonic 
Company, that imposed the procurement of services in its coverage areas. 
 
In Venezuela, in 1984, the country’s Electrical Company install the first fiber optic link 
consisting of a submarine cable of 9.6 km and OPGW type fiber optic of 45km, 
additionally a microwave backup system, both of them with PDH technology. 
 
It is at 1994 when due to the introduction of SDH technology, it is possible to 
overcome the lack of flexibility of PDF devices, related to the long multiplexing 
chains. 
 
In 2006, there was another step in evolution of communications technology, that year 
begins the migration of TDM systems (circuit switched) to packet switched (IP). At 
that moment the migration was considered relatively free of incompatibility issues, for 
that reason MPLS was discarded due to its complexity and inexistency of standards 
widely accepted and certified for its operation in electrical utilities. 
 2 
 
 
Special care in this migration was given to the critical services, such as teleprotection 
and transmission of information of SCADA systems. 
 
 
The deployed solution was the Gigabit Ethernet Network with the use of DWDM 
equipment, where the data and the teleprotection system use independent 
wavelengths, for the interconnection from protection relay to relay between both ends 
(see Fig. 3). 
 
 
Fig. 3. IP System and Teleprotection over DWDM 
 
In parallel to evolution of telecommunication systems, the protection relay’s 
technology developed to the IED. 
In first stage, the teleprotection schemes used wiring from relay’s IO contacts to a 
teleprotection equipment (Power Line Carrier, PDH, SDH) through electrical 
connection of 4-Wire audio channels. By pursuing more reliability and simplicity, 
some telecommunication equipment specialized for the utility sector, had a 
teleprotection interface built-in. 
In a more advanced stage, protection relays incorporated C37.94 optical ports, which 
interfaced with the same type of interface in the DWDM system. For those Power 
Lines of critical importance, the protection relay was added a 1550 nm optical port 
with optical power enough to overcome distances of about 100 km, connected 
through an exclusive pair of fiber optics to the relay at the remote substation. This 
option has the advantage to avoid transit through a multiplexer equipment, but losing 
the backup path feature provided by communication systems with Ring topology, 
additionally this alternative is costly because a pair of fibers is reserved for primary 
protection and a second pair of fiber for secondary protection. 
 
 
2 MPLS TECHNOLOGY 
2.1 Expectations about MPLS-TP technology 
Although the Gigabit Ethernet network deployed in conjunction with optical 
teleprotection has been efficient and dependable, it is costly and complex to stablish 
a proposal for rerouting in case of total fail of OPGW. This motivates the 
development of a telecommunication proposal associated to the operation of 
electrical sector that comply with the following premises: 
 Based on packet switching, to include the capability to switch to alternative 
routes defined in the network in case of primary or priority path fail. 
 Multiplatform, that allow us to integrate legacy technologies (PDH, SDH, 
SONET), being transparent to traffic and the operation of existing TDM 
systems. 
 3 
 
 Support for new synchronization protocols, such as IEEE 1588v2. Ensuring 
network synchronization and support to external synchronous systems. 
 Connection oriented, to ensure proper transmission time for critical services. 
 Minimal Latency and Jitter to be used for communication of critical mission, 
such as teleprotection between generator plants and substations. 
Symmetrical Bidirectional communication, to allow the application for 
differential line protection. 
 Management capacity levels (OAM), functionality and switch protection similar 
to transport networks TDM (SDH) to be deployed by the same technical staff 
existing on the electrical utility industry, requiring the same expertise level as 
any other transport technology. 
 High voltage substation hardened equipment, that comply with environmental 
requirements such as: high temperatures and electromagnetic fields as 
defined in IEEE 1613[3] 
 Must be scalable to bigger networks, allowing partial provisioning that allow 
gradual integration of different systems as they are deployed. 
 
After multiple analysis summarize in table 1, it is considered that MPLS-TP 
technology, developed in a joint effort between ITU-T and IETF, currently represent 
the solution for flexibility, economy and homologation that suffices the necessity of 
telecommunications related to the electrical utility. 
 
Table 1. TDM and MPLS-IP technology comparison2.2 MPLS-TP and its features 
MPLS-TP is built upon MPLS, basing in the necessity of a simplified OAM in the 
packet network and to optimize its use as Access Network, but also considering that 
not all characteristics of MPLS are necessary or consistent with transport networks, 
MPLS-TP can be considered a library of MPLS with some enhancements to provide 
support for traditional transport operational models that provide transport to critical 
services. 
MPLS-TP is connection oriented, deterministic set of packet switching transport 
protocol. It is having more and more acceptance around the globe, among other 
reasons, because it is being developed as a joint effort from ITU-T and IETF to 
develop a standardized optimized version of MPLS for transport networks. 
MPLS-TP is oriented to Access/aggregation of SDH. 
The essential features of MPLS-TP defined by IETF and ITU-T are: 
FEATURE SDH/SONET MPLS-TP 
Alternative backup paths in case of primary path failure 1 N+1 
Interoperability with TDM or IP technologies in a transparent fashion. YES YES 
Precision Time Protocol IEEE 1588v2 NO YES 
Connection Oriented YES YES 
Symmetrical path switch, log delay and low jitter YES YES 
OAM (Operation, Administration and Maintenance) simplicity YES YES 
IEEE 1613 certified YES YES 
Scalable from a minimal configuration available YES YES 
Spare parts availability for 10+ years YES YES 
Certified equipment and with immediate availability YES YES 
 4 
 
 MPLS forwarding plane with restrictions 
 PWE3 Pseudowire Architecture 
 Control Plane: static or dynamic, Generalized MPLS (G-MPLS) 
 Enhanced OAM functionality 
 OAM monitors and drives protection switching 
 Use of Generic Associate Channels (G-ACh) to support fault, configuration, 
accounting, performance and security (FCAPS) functions. 
 Multicasting is under further study. 
 
MPLS-TP has deleted a set of features of MPLS which are not compatible with 
Connection Oriented networks. 
 Disabled Penultimate Hop Popping (PHP) to reduce processing on the edge 
router. 
 The capability to send traffic through other path of equal cost (Equal Cost Multi 
Path -ECMP) which is incompatible with the requirement of being deterministic. 
MPLS-TP is bidirectional LSP, it is, the traffic between two nodes of the electric 
system use the same path in both directions. 
 Prohibited Label-Switched Paths (LSPs) merge, it leads to loss of information 
about the origin of the traffic and make complex the supervision of each individual 
path. 
 
 
3 COMMUNICATION PLATFORM REQUIRED FOR ELECTRICAL UTILITY 
 
3.1 Mission-Critical Communications in MPLS-TP 
The critical teleprotection/protection communication are implemented over MPLS-TP 
emulating a ring (a logical ring), to guarantee in that way a path symmetry along 
which a packet is send and received. 
If we consider the communication traffic along the operative electrical system, the 
teleprotection scheme, where the teleprotection commands are transferred between 
neighbor substations and supported by Gigabit Ethernet links through fiber optic, it 
generally does not suffer issues related to latency or delay, nevertheless, we need to 
consider the worst-case scenario when the OPGW fails between the substations. 
Under this circumstance, it should be triggered a path switch in the communication 
equipment that allows a rerouting through several substations that are part of the 
logical ring previously defined, with a possible increase of traffic as a result of the 
contingency of the electrical system. 
 
The MPLS-TP architecture is based on server-client model, in which the MPLS-TP 
operate independently of: its clients, related Management and control networks. 
The MPLS-TP channels are based in the Pseudo wire Emulation Edge-to-Edge 
(PWE3) model. A PWE3 emulates the essential attributes of a Permanent 
Connectivity Service over a packet switched network, similar to a dedicated TDM line 
or circuit. From the client point of view, the pseudo-wire is perceived as a link or 
circuit not shared. An MPLS-TP tunnel can contain multiple pseudo wires. 
 
Several MPLS-TP paths can be used to build Meshed infrastructures connecting the 
packet transport networks. 
The Internal transfer and traffic switch inside the packet network, is independent of 
the specific protocol stack and the Application Service from the client side, whereas 
 5 
 
the edge mapping could be optimally configured and tuned according to customer 
requirements. 
 
An MPLS-TP network can achieve the interconnection of IP-routed devices with a 
group of point-to-point pseudo-wires or E-LAN transport services. The real 
interoperability exist in the Ethernet link or in the Media Access Control (MAC). 
With MPLS-TP, one packet network can emulate the features of legacy services 
while new connectivity services that are in synergy with All-IP oriented advanced 
services. 
 
As premises, it is considered the following objectives. 
 It must support the migration from primary and secondary distance protection 
relay in both schemes (21/21N/67/67N – 21/21N/67/67N) to primary 
differential protection and secondary distance protection (87L - 
21/21N/67/67N). This last scheme is more reliable because by having 
differential and distance protection relays which operate under different 
philosophies, facilitating the detection of an atypical failure in the Power 
Transmission Line. 
 It will be preserved for line protection the interface C37.94 
 Support of communication for WAMS (Wide-Area Measurement Systems), 
used to perform the real time monitoring and dynamic control of the Power 
System Status. Typically they consist of: PMUs (Phasor Measurement Unit) to 
guarantee the security and stability of the power systems, PDC (Phasor Data 
Concentrator), Control Centers, as well as high speed data communication 
networks. 
 
The “mission critical” communications are fundamental to define the technology to be 
used in the transition from TDM networks to packet switched networks in the 
transport system. Due to the critical nature of this type of communications for a 
reliable operation of the Power System, it is necessary a communications 
infrastructure that comply with the requirements of high availability with a minimum 
delay. 
MPLS-TP comply this requirements, for it is compatible with traffic engineering, 
guarantying deterministic delays for high priority traffic. 
Therefore, it is required improved protection features. MPLS-TP OAM (Operation, 
Administration and Maintenance) achieve the end-to-end protection, by providing the 
feature of switching protection, controlled by the Bidirectional Forwarding Detection 
(BFD) and Protection State Coordination Protocols. BFD detects failures in labels of 
switched paths (LSP) and PSC coordinates the protection switching. 
 
MPLS-TP has been designed with the goal to ensure that operators and applications 
in substations can improve the goal sub-50ms for path protection in a variety of 
physical network configuration, in this case “Zero packet Loss” represents a solution 
equivalent to the feature <3mS that offer very few manufactures of SDH for electric 
systems. 
 
The key features must include: 
 Deterministic end-to-end path protection 
 Protection switching <20 ms (based on the signal degradation or fail) 
 Support for several protection designs (1:1,1+1,1: N) 
 6 
 
 Hitless switching (Zero Packet Loss) for protection and teleprotection 
connections. 
 
3.2 MPLS-TP compatibility with line protection schemes 
Communication paths are essential for the protection schemes where the reliability, 
symmetry and speed are critical parameters to allow the reliable operation of 
protection schemes. 
 
For CORPOELEC system, the following two are the cases where communications 
arerequired: 
 Distance protection (21): Trip, Blocking, Unblocking, etc 
 Differential protection (87L): Measurement transmission of Current, Voltage, 
Angle 
 
These protection schemes stablish from the communications the following 
challenges: 
 Low delay for fast communication. 
 End to end delay to be as maximum 10 ms. 
 Symmetric delay over same communication path Tx/Rx. 
 Direct interface of all substation applications (legacy and IP interfaces). 
 Path switching of the emulated TDM paths to be manually predefined. 
 High availability of the channel path. 
 Low Jitter. 
 Transport requirements of circuit emulation (CESoPSN, SATOP) for 
traditional teleprotection and EoMPLS for IEC61850 based teleprotection. 
 Frequency synchronization (Synch-E, 1588v2 PTP) of the MPLS-TP devices 
for TDM transport. 
 
 
4 MEASUREMENT OF DELAY OF A TELEPROTECTION SIGNAL OVER MPLS-TP 
To determine the transmission time of a teleprotection signal through a 
communications system based on MPLS-TP and the contribution of the MPLS-TP 
equipment only to this total transmission time, it was performed a couple of 
measurement tests using a scope meter suitable to capture the transmission and the 
reception of a teleprotection signal consisting of a pulse signal: 
 
In a first scenario, two teleprotection equipment were connected directly through fiber 
optic while located in the same room (zero fiber optic delay) using C37.94 interfaces 
as shown in figure 4: 
 
C37.94 C37.94
FIBER OPTIC
CH1
CH2
SCOPEMETER
TELEPROTECTION
INPUT OUT
TELEPROTECTION
INPUT OUT
DC
Z
DC
 
Fig. 4. Test diagram for measurement of transmission time (TP equipment back to 
back) 
 
 7 
 
The transmission time is measured from the activation of the teleprotection input until 
the closure of the solid state output in the same equipment; this is, there is a “wire 
loopback” in the remote equipment, so the signal is returned by that, and this 
loopback includes the whole system from I/O interface at local to I/O interface at the 
remote equipment. With both directions having the same delay the transmission time 
in one direction is obtained by dividing the captured time difference by 2, in this 
example: 8.0 ms /2 = 4 ms. 
 
 
Fig. 5. Measurement of Transmission time. TP equipment back to back 
 
In a second scenario, the C37.94 interfaces were connected through MPLS-TP 
equipment, the communication between both MPLS-TP units is also through fiber 
optic with 1Gbps interface, both equipment in the same room (zero fiber optic delay) 
as shown in figure 6: 
 
CH1
CH2
SCOPEMETER
FIBER OPTIC
MPLS-TP
DC
Z
TELEPROTECTION
INPUT
C37.94
OUT
TELEPROTECTION
INPUT
C37.94
OUT
DC
 
Fig. 6. Test diagram for measurement of transmission time (Including MPLS-TP) 
 
The delay on the teleprotection and MPLS-TP equipment is affected by parameters 
like timers and buffers; with a typical configuration that works in the field, the 
following capture shows a round trip time of 15ms, then the transmission time in one 
direction is 7.5 ms: 
 
 8 
 
 
 
Fig. 7. Measurement of Transmission time. Including MPLS-TP delay 
 
For this test, the teleprotection equipment is using solid state outputs. 
 
Based on the tests done in these two scenarios, we can determine that the 
contribution to the total transmission time added by the MPLS-TP with the interfaces 
described is: 
 
Delay added by MPLS-TP equipment: 7.5 ms – 4 ms = 3.5 ms 
 
The total delay of teleprotection service through this communication system is 7.5 ms 
which is lower than the requirement of 10ms mentioned hereinabove. 
 
 
5 CONCLUSIONS 
 
MPLS-TP seems to be suitable as main platform for Communications of control 
centers, substations and generation plants in order to have reliable Exchange of 
information related to Measurement data, control and protection signaling. 
 
 
Based on the analysis performed to the MPLS-TP technology and the time response 
of the performed lab test, we consider this technology suitable for the Energy 
transport network as an optimized path of the progressive migration from the legacy 
TDM platform to the modern and reliable packet switched network. 
 
The MPLS-TP equipment to be deployed should perform as multiplatform nodes 
keeping available legacy interfaces as E1, STM-1 and C37.94 which could be 
supported by emulation of TDM rings through Pseudo-Wires. This feature together 
with the high capacity Ethernet interfaces will provide a strong backbone and access 
facilities that smoothly allows the update of existing investments until the end of its 
lifetime. 
 
 
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6 REFERENCES 
 
[1] Ramirez y Cabrera, “Smart Communication System SCS” D2_312 in CIGRE 
2014, Paris, Aug. 2014. 
 
[2] IEC 60495, Single sideband power-line carrier terminals, second edition 1993-09. 
CEI 1993. SWITZERLAND. Section 5.2.1. 
 
[3] IEEE Std 1613™-2009. Standard Environmental and Testing Requirements for 
Communications Networking Devices Installed in Electric Power Substations 
 
[4] Mehmet Toy, “Networks and Services: Carrier Ethernet, PBT, MPLS-TP, and 
VPLS” 
2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 
 
[5] Ina Minei, Julian Lucek, “MPLS-enabled applications: emerging developments 
and new technologies” 
Third Edition- 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 
 
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[7] Jeong-dong Ryoo, Taesik Cheung, Daniel King, Adrian Farrel, and Huub van 
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Magazine • December 2014 
 
[8] Jiji Soman, Devi Murali, “A Comparative Study on Protection Methods in MPLS-
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during 16th - 18th July -2014.